Wisconsin native, conservative critic of everything.
"Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God." ---G K Chesterton
"The only objective of Liberty is Life" --G K Chesterton
"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions" --G K Chesterton
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Immigration of Computer Whizzes

Steve Forbes attempts to make the case that the US economy is going to suffer because Immigration policy now restricts foreign students from coming here, earning a degree, and then applying their IT skills.

Really, Steve?

Some would simply take Forbes' input (a re-puking of ITAA propaganda combined with certain collegiate-professor Interest Group propaganda) as the ultimate word on the situation. After all, if it "hurts American Business" it simply must be reversed or derogated.

Norm Matloff is a professor at a UC campus. He's well aware of the politics and the interest groups. He also presents info which simply debunks Forbes' alarmism.

In a nutshell: The US does not lack for talented IT people. The "reformers" simply want CHEAPER IT people. Indentured servitude of the Green Card variety assures that end; dealing with US citizens is more challenging.

UPDATE: Career experts say the decline of traditional tech jobs for U.S. workers isn't likely to reverse anytime soon.

The U.S. software industry lost 16 percent of its jobs from March 2001 to March 2004, the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute found. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that information technology industries laid off more than 7,000 American workers in the first quarter of 2005.

"Obviously the past four or five years have been really rough for tech job seekers, and that's not going to change - there are absolutely no signs that there's a huge boom about to happen where techies will get big salary hikes or there will be lots of new positions opening for them," said Allan Hoffman, the tech job expert at career site Monster.com.(http://americaneconomicalert.org/news_item.asp?NID=1586482)Maybe Steve Forbes didn't read this article, eh?